The Case for Reading Braille

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Many people, including some advocates for the disabled, feel that vision-impaired persons, especially adults, don't need to learn how to read braille. The prevailing attitude is that legally blind people don't have to read braille books because they can simply listen to recorded versions of them on audiocassette and compact disc.

From the mid-'60s to the present, the percentage of school-aged blind children in this country who use braille as their primary reading medium has dropped from 50 percent to 12 percent, and more than a generation of blind children has been largely allowed to grow up illiterate under the damaging notion that tape recordings and talking computers are sufficient for them.